The Witherdowns

The industrial district of Locastus, where huge, cathedral-like factories rise over the low brick houses, and tall ivy-choked chimneys spew out black smoke, day and night.

The Witherdowns, one of the newest districts of Locastus, stands on the wedge-shaped piece of land directly north of the Maul, where the Slake and Urok rivers - after flowing on close parallell routes for several miles - finally converge. Checker´s Narrow, a reedy, garbage-filled channel, separates the Witherdowns from the Maul, cutting across the tongue of land before the convergence point and is spanned by two bridges, one a blocky, algae-slimed stone monstrosity, the other a spindly, rusty, gridwork-framed contraption.

The district is intersected by two broad, north-south streets (named Salpetre Street and Alkali Road, respectively), which are both extensions of avenues beginning in the Maul, and extending across the two bridges into Witherdowns. The newly finished Thunderhead Railway Line enters from the north, ending at the switchyard at the Thunderhead Mining Company´s main complex at the northeast edge of the Witherdowns, along the banks of the river Urok.

A multitude of dead-end channels run deep inland from the two rivers, an intricate, stagnant network constructed to facilitate transport of barges and freight-ships to the various industrial compounds, their waters covered in floating ash and rainbow-slicked oilstains.

The relatively level land between the rivers, once covered in meadows and fields, are now covered in blocky brick houses and barracks, their corrugated sheet-metal roofs leprous and runnels of rust, soot and mould staining the walls beneath. The unlovely, utilitarian buildings, originally laid out in a precise, regular pattern - evoking a concentration camp-like feel - are interspersed with more recent, haphazard shacks, sheds and massive, corroding hulks of broken-down machinery, and the narrow alleys and spaces between them choked with rubbish, middens and piles of smoking slag. Few of the streets, excpet for the main routes, are cobbled - most are just compacted soil, with a tendency to turn into soupy mud in wet weather.

Out of the compacted mess of low brick houses rises behemoth, baroque factory buildings - dark basilicas to the hoary, bloodthirsty deity called Industrialism - and tall, ivy-webbed chimneys spew black smoke and cinders over the bleak landscape. Towering over all else, its jagged spires penetrating the low-hanging, sickly-coloured and chimney-fed clouds, is the massive, twisted Tower of Necrology, where the humanoid dead are turned into automaton-like Deaders, Locastus´s inexpensive labor force.

Witherdowns is the home of all the heavy industry in Locastus, here are the switchyards, foundries, forges, smelteries, lumbermills, factories and assembly lines. Vast alchemical processing plants lie nestled in dense, complex knots of pipes, tanks and conduits and, along with the tanneries on the banks of the two rivers, dump lethal cocktails of dye, acid, slag and toxins into the already silty water.

The smell that permeates the district is a powerful mélange of rotting garbage, ashes, aromatic hydrocarbons and the acrid, bitter stench of slag and molten metal, overlaying the unpleasant odour of unwashed, diseased humanity.

The inhabitants, an unlikely blend of immigrants from the various hill and prairie tribes and the poorest of Locastrians, are generally a surly, bitter lot, prone to heavy drinking and violence. Many are scarred from industrial accidents, or disfigured by the many diseases that thrive in the cramped workers´ barracks.

Most work 12-hour days for a meagre paycheck, and child labour is common, doing jobs that requires small hands and nimble fingers. The heavily polluted air, tainted by heavy metals, soot and creosote, gives rise to a plethora of diseases in the population. Black-lung fever is common, as are eczemas, rashes and cancers. Infant mortality is high, and most inhabitants of the Witherdowns do not live beyond 40 years.

There is a palpable aura of apathy and abject misery in the Witherdowns, strangely powerful even for a place where such a cynical, calculated abuse is common, and any attempts at overt union-formation or agitation are brutally squashed by the Witherdown Marshals, a company-controlled milita, not much better than the criminals they (supposedly) are hired to keep in check.

Every night, the taverns, brothels, gambling dens and drug parlours on Spite Row, a short stretch of street between Salpetre Street and Alkali Road, fills up with hordes of workers hell-bent on wasting their meagre earnings on cheap alcohol, disease-ridden prostitutes and rigged games of chance. Various other, more sinister, agencies operate out of Spite Row - here are the offices of the Caretakers, the Blood Shylocks and shadowy clinics where the poor sell their organs for the benefit of the rich.

The underground, outlawed Locastrian Worker´s Union, under the command of a mysteriuos figure only known as the Badger, operates out of the seedy quarters surrounding Spite Row, from where they regularly stage ambushes and acts of sabotage directed at the Marshals or the companiy assets they are paid to protect.

In addition to the population of workers, there is a substantial population catering to the darker side of humanity. Organized crime, in the form of protection, drug trade and illegal brothels is common, and reap a significant profit from the desperate laborers.

Mowar Dusk, crime lord of the Maul, runs a slick, successful operation of drug-running and protection along Salpetre Street, eternally contested by the Eastside Hounds, a loose network of streetgangs - famous for their leather-hided war-dogs - who claims the upper part of Alkali Road as their turf.

An outside observer may find it strange that the companies have such a large human workingforce, in a city where Deaders, a cost-effective, untiring labour force, is common. The companies´s explanation is that living, thinking humans are needed to ensure production keeps running smoothly, but some sinister rumors suggest otherwise…

The Acibus Foundry stands on the western edge of the Witherdowns, a chaotic, interlaced labyrinth of hangar-like brick buildings, smoke-belching chimneys and beehive-shaped kiln structures, all woven together with a vast, intestinal skein of pipes, tanks, furiously spinning drive shafts, smoothly pumping pistons and thrumming, groaning expansion chambers.

Beyond the high, spiked iron fence that separates the Acibus Forge from the rest of the Witherdowns, a maze of narrow, cluttered avenues and passages twist and turn as they thread their way inwards among the haphazard mess of soot-stained buildings and steam-spewing machines, cut off at irregular intervals by spiked, rusting gates and chain-link, padlocked fences.

In the cobbled alleys and irregular open spaces, large cast-iron grilles bolted into the ground gush forth a thick, sulphurous vapour that contrasts with the acrid, bitter stink of molten metal that permeates the Foundry complex.

There seem to be little order or planning to the layout - indeed, it seems to have to have been grown rather than built, spreading onto the surrounding area like a metastasizing, invasive tumour.

The massive clutter of eaves, spouts and roof-peaks are adorned in bizarre wrought-iron ornaments, spiked and jagged, lending the complex a hellish aspect, further accenturated by scattered piles of smoking, glowing slag. At night, the vapour and river mists that lie thick over the compound are lit from within by the lurid glow of the cooling slag, and the arcane energies that dance like St. Elmo´s Fire on the outlandish, warped metal spikes and flanges.

At the heart of the maze of machinery and architecture rises a large, cubic, windowless building, 200 feet to a side, supported by massive buttresses and crowned by a hemispherical dome. This is the central foundry, where the poor Thunderhead ores are converted - through an unknown, arcane process, into high-quality steel and alloys.

The near-fractal, intestinal tangle of arcane conduits and pipes seem to converge on the central foundry building, their convolutions becoming more and more intricate, almost braiding together before vanishing from view within the dark, forbidding structure.

Ore that is delivered to the Foundry, either by barge or by train, are pre-processed in several steps in the outlying buildings and kilns, each batch slowly working its way inwards towards the central building, where an arcanely fuelled transmutation takes place, turning the enriched ore into high-grade metal, and producing a foaming, syrupy, lava-like mass of toxic, scalding slag in the process.

Should one gain access to the central kiln, one would find it to be a spherical, ceramic reaction chamber suspended by massive spars and chains in the center of a titanic hall, and with hundreds of pipes and tubes attached to it, like umbillicals. The refined ore is fed into the globe from a shute at the apex, wherein it is processed before the purified, molten metal is poured out from a massive valve at the bottom, directly into a multitude of ceramic cast-molds on the chamber floor.

The arcane effluence in this chamber, the inner sanctum of the Acibus Foundy, is so strong that it can be felt as a pressure over the chest, and a tingle down one´s spine. The intense heat and harsh effluent emanations in the hall makes this a very inhospitable place indeed, especially for one not wearing the right protective clothing.

Nowhere else in Locastus are the arcane arts used to this extent - the sheer volume of magical power being poured into the Foundry is simply staggering.

The Workers

In contrast to most heavy industries in the Witherdowns, the Acibus Foundry totally eschew a Deader workforce, apparently preferring to rely on living, breathing people to operate the kilns and smelteries. Representatives of the Foundry claims that Deaders, with their many invested Power Sigils, would corrupt the delicate, fine-tuned arcane processes and wards that surround the forges.

Also somewhat unusually, the Acibus Foundry seems to take rather good care of its workers, allowing them above-standard accommodations in the many on-site worker barracks, three free meals a day in the communal cantina and basic medical services in the Forge´s own well-equipped infirmary.

Even with the (for the Witherdowns) unusually high living-standard, the workers are a silent, apathetic lot, their eyes dull and sunken, their cheeks hollow and their walk the shuffling, hesitant gait of the very old or crippled. They have a pasty complexion, almost as if they were all anemic, and speak seldom, and then only in the single-syllable mumbles of the deathly exhausted. Many seem to have disfiguring diseases, or missing digits or limbs, perhaps too many even for their dangerous vocation.

The workers of the Foundry dress uniformly, in the company´s drab, grey wools and heavy boots. At their work stations, they commonly wear thick, insulating gloves, face masks, hemispherical steel helmets and toolbelts.

On rare occasions, usually when drunk, the workers of the Acibus Foundry are prone to tell weird stories of ember-spirits haunting the slag-piles in the dead of the night, of strange deaths among the workers, and of broken machines and buildings repairing themselves overnight. Few outside the Foundry put any credibility into these tall tales, laughing it off as mercury poisoning and sleep deprivation, but the workers keep telling them, and with alarming consistency.

Apart from the regular workers, the Acibus Foundry also employ an unusually large contigent of security guards, large, harsh men in leather greatcoats, steel-toed boots and shaded spectacles. They all seem to be bald, and carry business-like Breech-Loader rifles, truncheons and pig-stickers.

Their task seems to be to guard the workers, as much as to protect the facility itself. Security is extremely tight, and the guards will come down like a ton of bricks on anyone not authorized on the grounds.

The Boss

Johannes Acibus, the owner of the Acibus Foundry, is one of the wealthiest men in Locastus, but at the same time something of a hermit. He rarely leaves the Foundry grounds and spends most of his time in his opulent offices adjacent to the central foundry building. He surrounds himself with a large staff of all-male aides and secretaries, who manages most of his outside relations.

On the rare occasions he appears in public, people are struck by how unassuming he is. Acibus is of medium height, but with considerable girth, his greying hair neatly combed across his receding hairline, and sporting a neat goatee and elegantly curled moustashes.

He dresses the part of the successful industrial robber baron well, however; he is never seen without his stylish monocle, silver-capped walking stick and black-velvet cylinder hat.

Of Acibus´s personal history, very little is known, except that he has risen to his current heights from humble origins, and that he, in his youth, used to sail with the great mapping expeditions to many faraway places.

It is said that he returned from one of these journeys a changed man, driven by ambition. The Foundry started off small, but quickly grew as it became apparent that Johannes Acibus possessed the knowledge to refine the poor Thunderhead ores into high-quality steel, the hitherto unattainable holy grail of Locastus´s alchemists and arcane smelters.

He also never revealed the secret of his method, which led people to believe that he, on one of his many journeys, had found some cache of ancient knowledge that had helped him in his ambition.

Over the years, Acibus has been offered astronomical sums for his secret, but he has always declined - he just keeps producing vast quantities of his incredibly fine steel, a product which Locastus´s industrial development still is dependent upon.

The Secret

Johannes Acibus did indeed find something during his long expeditions to foreign parts. On the icy Lih-Pnah plateau on the distant continent of Koth, he stumbled across the alien, cyclopean ruins of a city filled with corroded mechanisms and glyph-carved basalt tablets.

At the centre of the spiral-shaped, crumbling mass of masonry and metal, in a crystal-cobbled plaza cluttered with half-finished, twisted mechanisms, Acibus and his archaeology team came upon a chained being, a transdimensional, non-corporeal entity with characteristics of both Deamon and Elemetal.

This spirit-creature, identifying itself as a Provider - an artificial being of the fabled Empire of the Ancients, constructed to synthesize, transmutate and refine raw materials into whatever the whims of its makers demanded - awoke from a millenia-long torpor and suddenly found itself… hungry. Aeons of incarceration, loneliness and starvation had turned the once beneficial spirit into something vampiric, ravenous and twisted, an evil parody of what it once was; a soul-devourer.

Acibus´s followers were all summarily slain, their souls absorbed by the starving spirit, but Acibus himself was spared, and instead offered a deal. It is possible that the ancient, hoary creature recognized something familliar in Acibus´s soul, a kernel of ruthlessness, intelligence and driven ambition that could turned to its own use.

The offer the Provider made to Acibus was it´s services in exchange for its preferred sustenance, the sweet nectar of human souls. Under the whispered tutelage of the spirit, Acibus managed to break its bonds, and forge a psychic symbiosis with it that allowed him to smuggle it aboard a ship bound for Locastus.

When that ship arrived at the docks in Locastus, Acibus was the only human aboard still alive, but managed to escape prosecution by a carefully prepared tale of a sudden, virulent disease erupting among the crew in mid-voyage.

Acibus and his spectral companion barely waited until the fuss had died down before they established their foundry on the outskirts of Locastus, using gems and artifacts scavenged from the Lih-Pnah ruins as a financial basis, and the Provider took up residence in the bizarrely constructed central foundry.

Though much of its former knowledge had been lost to the demented spirit, it quickly relearned the skill of refining metal and, heeding its ancient instincts, started to use its power on the low-grade ores it recieved, turning them into steel of unbelievably high quality, its crystalline structure of iron and carbon completely uniform, optimal and constant. Its thirst for human life-force was (and is) slaked by a small, constant siphoning of that of the Foundry workers - the real reason why the Foundry dont use Deaders as their primary work force.

The constant leeching of soul-energy is detrimental to the workers - despite nourishing food, good medical care and comfortable lodgings, they suffer from aches, pains and infections due to a deficient immune system, and are also chronically fatigued. They also age at a significantly increased rate, and, hence, have a predisposition for cancers, heart disease and stroke.

Sometimes, when insane rages comes upon the fractured, pain-filled Provider, workers are prone to die in weird industrial accidents as the spirit of the foundry tear their souls from their flesh in an attempt to ease its discomfort.

The veteran foundry workers know that, on certain days, the many spinning cogs and drive shafts, the pumping pistons and the rumbling ore-crushers of the Foundry have a thirst for blood, and they have learned to read the signs to avoid accidents. However, they know that before the day is done, the Foundry will have harvested its sacrifice.

The Powers Of The Foundry

The vast labyrinth of buildings and machinery around the central foundry, in which the physical nexus of the Provider resides, are all infused with the power of the spirit, forming its actual physical body, able to grow and heal like a living organism, and it can rearrange its internal structure to obstruct, trap or disorient anyone within.

Intruders (or those the Provider has marked for harvesting) are led around like rats in a maze, walls and machinery rearranging around them, while the Provider suckles the sweet emanations of their terror and frustration as it draws them ever closer to an inevitable, gruesome death within the intricate machinery.

The spirit is also aware of everything that goes on within its physical shell, and will sniff out an outsider within seconds.

In a pinch, the Provider can also call in its guards, who appear human but are, in fact, human-like constructs slaved to the Provider. These warlike beings are significantly stronger, tougher and faster than any human.

Harming the Foundry is hard, but can be achieved in four ways: Annihilating the entire Foundry grounds (which will recquire something close to a thermonuclear event); Destroying the spherical reaction chamber in which the "nexus" of the Provider resides (which is, naturally VERY heavily guarded); Starving the Provider by cutting off its supply of human life-force (in which case it will, eventually, sink back into a torpor-like state, ready to be reawakened again) or by harming Johannes Acibus, whose psychic symbiosis with the Provider will allow any harm done to one part to cause the same amount of damage to the other.

Of course, coming up with any of these options requires an intimate knowledge of the secrets of the Acibus Foundry, secrets very, very few beside Ascibus´s inner circle of advisors are privy to.

Author´s Notes

I´d like to thank Cheka Man, Michael Jotne Slayer and valadaar, who (in a 3am chat) helped me flesh out some of the ideas in this sub. In fact, MJS (who as I write this is playtesting the Locastus setting…) even wrote an entire poem on Locastrian industry, that was much too good to waste. Here it is:

"Fools all. They know nothing of our great work, of what we have accomplished. We will never progress while we look to a meaningless past for guidance. We have accomplished feats with our machines, steam and cannons that one can only dream of. We have Deader slaves in abundance, and that is good, for they will not notice that it is blood that greases the cogs of the Locastrian factories."

The Tower of Necrology is built at the heart of the Witherdowns, Locastus´s industrial district. Its 300-foot, twistedly conical bulk towers over all the buildings around it, and its jagged spires penetrates the low, chimney-fed cloud base above. At night, weird, purple lightning phenomena dance among those spires, as the Tower draws on arcane powers of the Aetherium to fuel the weird alchemies and electrothaumaturgic processes within.

The architecture of the Tower itself looks disturbingly organic, with many baroque flanges, knots and tumour-like growths protuding randomly along its length, making it appear as a gigantic tree-stump, gnarled and diseased, against the skyline.

The Tower of Necrology is the place where the corpses of the poor, and of the executed criminals, are turned into the tireless Deaders, automaton-like undead that form the base of Locastus´s industrial development.

In fact, the entire building is nothing more than a gigantic, arcane mechanism, built with the express purpose of preparing and reanimating corpses to a semblance of life. Inside, the Tower is revealed to be nothing but a shell, packed solid with obscure, intricate machinery and honeycombed with hangar-like halls, low passages, rickety catwalks, massive piping and glowing puissant conductors. Every flat surface is covered in glowing Power Sigils, their combined effluence palpable as a hair-raising, tingling presence in the air.

From top to bottom, the Tower is pierced by a thick crystal spar, a dimly glowing conduit for the puissant current harvested from the clouds, and funneled down through the forest of spars and spires at the top of the structure.

Interspersed among the machinery, seemingly at random, are the glass and metal, egg-like containers that holds human corpses, curing and marinating in different alchemical solutions, on their way to becoming Deaders. Here and there, one can see figures in the grey robes, rubber gloves and face masks of the Caretakers move silently along the passages, occasionally adjusting valves and levers on the machinery or checking the body-containers.

Occasionally, one can see one of these containers being moved along a ceiling-mounted conveyor-system, on their way from one instance to another.

The air is filled with a low, humming vibration as the various moving parts of the immense mechanism pump, slide and grind against each other in an organic, peristaltic movement, and occasional arcs of puissant energy jump between conductors and spars.

Deep below the Tower is an intricate network of catacombs, containing gargantuan reservoirs of alchemical compounds, which are pumped upwards to fuel the Deader manufacture above, as well as huge, bubbling vats of asphalt, used to cover the finished Deader in.

At the lower levels of the base of the Tower are the vast ice-houses, and the hangar-sized dissection halls, filled with row upon row of metal tables, where corpses are eviscerated, cleaned and prepared before they are hung on a meat-hook conveyor belt, and allowed to ascend further up the Tower to begin the reanimation process.

These nightmarish, white-tiled halls are usually full of Caretakers dressed in gore-stained rubber aprons and bent in deep, silent concentration over their grisly work. Abbatoir trenches that run the length of the halls are filled with the stinking refuse of their dissection and the strangely sweet, cloying stink of blood, rot and faesces lies heavily in the air.

Once the bodies are gutted, cleaned and sewn up, they are taken upstairs, where they are interred in egg-like cocoons and marinated for several weeks, the puissant current run through the dead tissue restoring it to a semblance of working order.

Once the arcane process has run its course, the corpse is dried out, covered in asphalt and inscribed with puissant symbols. The finished Deader is then shipped out to do whatever job it was designed for.

The Caretakers

The Caretakers are the operators of the Tower of Necrology, accomplished Magi and skillful engineers, one and all. Caretalkers dress in long, grey robes, long rubber gloves and face masks to ensure their anonymity.

In the poor areas, such as Witherdowns and the Maul, the Caretakers are a common sight as they, in the early hours after dawn, comb the streets for the corpses of vagrants, junkies or the homeless. They also operate various offices in those areas, where the poor themselves can come in and put themselves on a contract for a small monthly retainer, or even sell the bodies of their desceased relatives. In the Witherdowns, with its high mortality rate, there is never a shortage of bodies.

Most Caretakers are family men and women, living a perfectly normal life despite their unpleasant vocation. They are usually recruited from the Universities or Mage Academies, and see themselves as the mediators of a necessary, but unfortunately unpleasant, function. The position as Caretaker is an attractive one for the poor stipend-takers or talented middle-class, as the pay is good, and the job comes with significant benefits, such as high-level medical care and tax reductions.

Nevertheless, many Caretakers feel soiled by their cynical vocation, and attempt to absolve themselves by lending their off hours to volunteer work among the poor, old and diseased. Many Caretakers have an extensive knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and make extremely good surgeons. Unfortunately, the nature of their work also make them predisposed for drug abuse, alcoholism and suicide.

The Caretakers are also often the target of suspicions and physical violence, and the common people see them as manifestations of an opperssive government. It is not uncommon for Caretakers to be hurt or killed in their line of duty, which explains the substantial benefits that has been granted to those willing to do this unpleastant job.

The Body Praxis

Within the poverty and misery of the slums of Witherdowns and the Maul the Caretakers operate a make-shift welfare named the "Body Praxis". In effect, the Tower ensures a steady supply of fresh corpses by offering a small monthly retainer for anyone willing to allow the Caretakers to turn their remains into a Deader after death, much in the same way as an organ donor.

Those who sign the contract of the Body Praxis are fitted with a discreet, puissant bracelet which will alert the Caretakers once the wearer stops breathing, and will allow them to locate the body. The bracelet is magically fused to the life force of the wearer, and any attempt at removing it will result in the death of the wearer. There are a few, scattered rumors of people successfully removing the token without perishing in the process, but no one knows if this is really true, or just another wild legend spawned from the fantasies of the poor and downtrodden.

Among the lower and middle class, there is a certain pride in earning enough not to have to sell themselves or their loved ones to the Tower to survive. In the cramped quarters of the Witherdowns, many a nagging mother-in-law has been threatened with being sold to the Tower upon her demise.

The cemeteries of the Witherdowns are heavily guarded facilities, ringed with high fences and alarms, to ensure no grave robbers steal away the corpses of the few wealthy enough to afford a proper burial, instead of an afterlife of unthinking slavery.

Author´s Note

The Tower of Necrology and the Body Praxis, once a hazy idea in my cluttered mind, was made clear and tangible after a brainstorming session with Mesenchymal, my evil muse…..

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First of all, let me say that I love the name! And while there was nothing wrong with the write-up I felt that it was somehow lacking. More like a frame for something then the actual "painting". It shows much promise though, and hints at some great ideas.

OK, ladies and gentlemen, I´ve added a map to this sub as well.
Sadly, it has to be a linked image, since our gallery ain´t accepting uploads at the moment.
As soon as it works again, I´ll put the map up as a nice thumbnail.
Hope you´ll like it!
/David

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The Land of Mad Children

In the far reaches of a long-lost wilderness, there stands a forgotten town inhabited only by children. Though they appear normal enough, their eyes burn with madness, and they speak in a foreign, archaic tongue. Nearly a millenia ago, a powerful spell had gone awry, or maybe it had succeeded - in any case, it ended up blessing, or cursing, an entire generation of children with agelessness. However, as the centuries passed, the children's parents grew old and died, the buildings of the town crumbled to earth, and even the civilization itself faded into history, becoming lost to time. All that remained were the children, driven mad by the psychological toll of living for hundreds of years beyond their age. In time, most children died, killed off by fighting amongst themselves, while many others were driven to suicide. Only a small handful remain, and they are a strange people indeed.